December 2010

Volume 97, No. 3

Articles

The Northern United States and the Genesis of Racial Lynching: The Lynching of African Americans in the Civil War Era

While scholars have composed a rich body of work on the lynching of African Americans
in the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century South, Michael J. Pfeifer argues
that the study of racial lynching in the North in the early 1860s helps redress key
gaps in the historiography of lynching. Examining wartime racial lynchings in Milwaukee,
Wisconsin, in 1861 and Newburgh, New York, in 1863, Pfeifer explores how Irish
Catholic ethnic solidarity in these communities was as pivotal as a developing concept
of “whiteness.” Despite important differences in contexts, the practice and ideology of
Northern Irish paralleled, and indeed slightly anticipated, that of white Southerners who
later seized upon lynching as a means of rejecting the Reconstruction state’s insistence
on color-blind law. (pp. 621–35) Read online >

“Those by Whose Side We Have Labored”: American Jewish Women and the Peace
Movement between the Wars

Participating enthusiastically in American public life was one of the ways that turn-of-
the-century American Jewish women achieved a measure of integration. Melissa
R. Klapper traces the understudied social activism of American Jewish women in the
peace movement between the world wars, exploring the multiple motivations for their
participation and analyzing its impact on the early twentieth-century women’s movement.
Klapper argues that despite Jewish women’s investment in the movement, Nazism
and anti-Semitism at home and abroad before World War II and the apparent silence
of their colleagues in the peace movement led even the most passionate female Jewish
peace activists to reconsider their commitments. In the face of these challenges, Klapper
explains, these female activists ultimately redirected their political ideals toward Jewish
identity and survival rather than sisterhood or universal peace. (pp. 636–58) Read online >

From Monopoly to Intellectual Property: Music Piracy and the Remaking of
American Copyright, 1909—1971

Since the 1970s critics have decried the expansion of intellectual property rights, while
supporters of copyright and patent reform have argued that the protection of “information”
is vital for the U.S. economy. Alex S. Cummings explores the reasons for this tension,
showing how struggles over music piracy paved the way for stronger regulation of
intellectual property. Lawmakers in the Progressive Era denied copyright protection for
sound recordings, leaving pirates to challenge American sensibilities about monopoly,
music, and the public interest. Through legal and legislative battles, a new conception
gradually emerged of copyright as a safeguard for capital investment rather than an incentive
for artist creation, buttressing claims about the economic needs of an “information
society” in the late twentieth century. (pp. 659–81) Read online >

“That’s the Way I’ve Always Heard It Should Be”: Baby Boomers, 1970s
Singer-Songwriters, and Romantic Relationships

A series of “revolutions” rocked American society during the 1960s, but Judy Kutulas
argues that it was only during the 1970s that these changes really found their way
into Americans’ daily lives. The sexual revolution, the counterculture, and the women’s
movement altered American attitudes about love, romance, and marriage. Along with
undermining social values, sixties revolutions also undermined traditional authority
sources. Consequently, young Americans turned to their peers and their popular culture
as they began shaping their adult lives. Kutulas explores the ways a particular kind of
popular music spoke to youthful trendsetters about marriage, commitment, sexuality,
and monogamy and, in particular, helped legitimate relationships, rather than marriage,
as the goal of heterosexual interactions. (pp. 682–702) Read online >

Why Mass Incarceration Matters: Rethinking Crisis, Decline, and Transformation in
Postwar American History

By the close of the twentieth century the United States had incarcerated more people
than any other country in the world, and the nation’s social, economic, and political
institutions had become inexorably intertwined with the practice of punishment. Historians,
however, have not yet considered what impact the rise of a massive carceral state
might have had on the evolution of the later postwar period. Heather Ann Thompson
argues that such an examination of the later twentieth century is crucial if scholars are to
understand fully the dramatic transformations that occurred after the civil rights sixties,
including the origins of urban crisis, the decline of the American labor movement, and
the rise of the Right. (pp. 703–58) Read online >

Recent Issues

The full text of the Journal of American History (1914–current) is available online to members of the OAH and to institutions that subscribe to the print versions of the journal. Electronic access is provided by Oxford University Press.

A subscription to the JAH is one of the many benefits available to members of the Organization of American Historians (oah). To join the oah and receive the JAH, complete and submit a membership application at the oah Web site.